City investigating owners of burned apartment building, looks to demolish<\/a><\/p>\nMayor Andy\u00a0Ezard said in March that the demolition could cost $500,000, though a\u00a0Jaren Industries bid\u00a0\u2014 the lowest received\u00a0\u2014 put the cost at $349,350. Bids are not guaranteed to be the final cost of a project.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t deserve spending it, but unfortunately the city\u2019s in that kind of business to take the things that happen like that, and we kind of work to remediate that,\u201d Ezard said. \u201cIt\u2019s a pain to take that much money out of the budget. It\u2019s not budgeted for, but that\u2019s why we have reserves.\u201d<\/p>\n
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During Monday\u2019s city council meeting, aldermen voted 5-1 to approve cutting the typical bidding procedure short and awarding the contract to Jaren Industries, pending a court order. Officials said they\u2019ve received multiple bids for the project but, to make sure the demolition can happen as soon as a court approves it, the city won\u2019t take any other bids.<\/p>\n
Owners of the property are being served with court summonses as the city moves forward with legal action against them for ordinance violations and a refusal to communicate regarding the demolition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to serve all the interested parties with a summons in the court case before we can get a demolition order,\u201d Ezard said. \u201cThe summonses are out for service, but not all are served. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut on this.\u201d<\/p>\n
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After all parties are served, the city will have to wait about a month before there can be a demolition order, \u00a0Ezard said.<\/p>\n
Scott Driver, owner of Driver Construction and Grading, and C.J. Hood, representing International Union of Operating Engineers Local 965, both questioned the council\u2019s decision to waive the bidding process.<\/p>\n
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Driver Construction and Grading owner Scott Driver (middle) and CJ Hood (right), who represents International Union of Operating Engineers Local 965, listen to Jacksonville officials talk about the bidding process.<\/p>\n
Bridgette Fox\/Journal-Courier<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of responsible bidders around the state that could have put in bids for that if they (Jacksonville) would have actually put it out for bid in a broader spectrum, like on a bidding platform,\u201d Hood said.<\/p>\n
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The city pushed back against those claims, pointing out that the building needs to come down as soon as possible and it already was open for bids.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bids were open for a month,\u201d Nyberg said. \u201cWe received a lot of them; and everybody that called, I said I would let let them know what (how much asbestos) had to be abated.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the council\u2019s workshop session, Driver and\u00a0Nyberg also spoke about the process, Driver saying multiple contractors did not get a follow-up call about asbestos abatement.<\/p>\n
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Jacksonvlle Community Development director Brian Nyberg listens to Scott Driver speak about the bidding process for a vacant apartment building that burned in January.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bridgette Fox\/Journal-Courier<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s more or less why I\u2019m here tonight, just to kind of understand the process so we don\u2019t lose out on an opportunity again,\u201d Driver said.<\/p>\n
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Nyberg said he wished the company would have turned in a bid and said notices were published in the Journal-Courier, which Driver said he had seen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew it was in the paper, and that\u2019s when I called the office,\u201d Driver said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to hold your meeting up, but I just wanted to emphasize that I did call the office, I went through the proper steps, never received the actual ‘Hey, does this have has asbestos, and how we do bid it? ‘ because obviously, like Brian said, if you have asbestos, you have to bid it accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Driver said his company also wasn\u2019t contacted about another demolition \u2014 this one at 824 N. Clay Ave. \u2014 for which the bidding processed also was waived Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll look internally and clean some things up,\u201d Ezard said later during the City Council meeting. \u201cThere\u2019s no conspiracy here. This building burned, we\u2019re trying our best to get it down. And that\u2019s it. It\u2019s for public health and safety. There\u2019s no … hidden story here.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Jaren Industries equipment has been on the property since the days following the fire as a safety precaution, before the city was certain it would have to take over the demolition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vibe that I felt, that someone\u2019s out trying to benefit from this, is not accurate,\u201d\u00a0Ezard said. \u201cThis is something the city absolutely does not want to pay for and it\u2019s hard to wrap around because it takes away other projects, or it delays the projects.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The lone \u201cno\u201d vote to approve the waiving of bids came from Alderman Aaron Scott. He said his objection was because he felt there could be a grant opportunity that would lower the cost of a demolition or remove the city\u2019s burden entirely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A crane sits outside an abandoned apartment building. The building caught fire in January and is awaiting demolition.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,115,278],"class_list":["post-232656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}